LENDING AN EAR to the immobile
305-meter-wide Arecibo radio telescope, a
revolving directional device aims for a specific
star. Will this dish receive the first signals from
adistant society? Jill Tarter, who keeps cham
pagne on ice awaiting the big moment, notes:
"If we don't look, the chances are zero."
surely know life was present. It would say
nothing, however, about how advanced that
life would be.
Already, for the past 33 years, scientists
have been seeking signs of intelligent life
elsewhere in the universe. NASA's Search
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence- SETI-was
recently expanded under the new name High
Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS).
"We've been looking for evidence of anoth
er civilization's technology," says project sci
entist Jill Tarter of NASA's Ames Research
Center. "Maybe others out there have set up
radio beacons to say: 'Hello, we're here.' Or
maybe there's a multiplanet system broad
casting their versions of the Super Bowl to
each other. It's possible we could eavesdrop."
To detect such signals, radio telescopes
around the world have been conducting two
types of searches, one aimed at nearby stars
similar to our sun. The National Science
Foundation radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto
Rico, has done 200 out of 2,600 hours of HRMS
observing scheduled over the next decade.
The other search is a broader all-sky survey.
In the past, HRMS receivers have recorded
many suspicious signals. But when astrono
mers tried to relocate the signals, they found
nothing. The new search is computerized. An
interesting signal will automatically trigger
much faster attention. Tarter says the public
will be informed as soon as a signal is verified.
"Everything would change," she says. "I
think finding another civilization would have
a positive influence. The differences between
us and them would be so much greater than
those that we on earth squabble over with such
horrific results. The discovery might bring us
closer together on this planet and give us a
more common perspective."
But any hopes for such a profound discovery
were dampened recently by Congressional
plans to cut off all federal funding for HRMS.
"We're looking for private funds to keep
our team together and get our equipment back
on a telescope," says a disappointed but deter
mined Tarter. "Somehow we'll find a way."
BACK ON MAUNA KEA, at NASA's
Infrared Telescope Facility, I meet
Karen and Stephen Strom. The
husband-and-wife team from the
University of Massachusetts has long been
observing star formation. We talk of conclu
sions that new detectors have made possible.
"We now think that all stars develop disks
with planet-forming potential," says Stephen.
NationalGeographic,January 1994